Etymological Dictionary of Basque - Cryptm.org

46 R. L. Trask
M11. Verbs in -n
Most ancient verbs built on verbal roots have a perfective participle (citation form) of the
structure e-Root-i, where the prefix e- is of unknown function but appears in all non-finite
forms of ancient verbs, and the suffix -i marks the perfective participle. Examples: etorri
‘come’, ikusi ‘see’. But quite a number of verbs are exceptional. Their participle has the
form e-Root[-n], in which the suffix -i is absent and the root ends in an -n which
sometimes behaves like part of the root and sometimes not. Examples: joan ‘go’, egin ‘do,
make’. As a rule, the /n/ remains in the perfective participle and in the radical, but it
disappears in the synthetic finite forms (where these exist), and in word-formation when a
suffix or a following lexical item is added. Trask (1990) proposes that these were once
verbs of ordinary form whose roots happened to end in /n/, and that the loss of intervocalic
/n/ by P1 produced anomalous forms which then underwent analogical reorganization.
This analysis is supported by the observation that the participles of the two verbs eman
‘give’ and igan ‘go up’ are each recorded once in the early texts as emai and as ikai.
M12. Verbs in -o
There are also a number of ancient verbs whose citation forms end in -o, such as jo ‘hit’,
ito ‘drown’ and ero ‘kill’. These verbs exhibit a number of peculiarities, some of them
shared with the verbs in -n, and indeed there are verbs variably belonging to both groups,
such as igan ~ igo ‘go up’. It seems likely that the verbs in -o are historically verbs in -n
which have undergone further complex developments, but the history of these verbs
cannot at present be recovered.
M13. Exceptional stems with an extra /i/
{****}
M14. Shift from the /-i/ class to the /-tu/ class
In a number of cases, verbs have been shifted from the -i class to the -tu class. Examples:
old sarri, modern sartu ‘enter’, ‘insert’ (from an unknown stem); old aberatsi, modern
aberastu ‘get rich’, ‘enrich’ (from aberats ‘rich’); ****. This process can also affect the
unusual verbs in -n and in -o described in the next two sections: old (and still current) jario
~ jarion ‘flow’, regional variant jariatu.
When this shift happens, sometimes the old participle remains fossilized in the language as
an adjective. Examples: ezagutu ‘be acquainted with’ (verb), ezagun ‘familiar, wellknown’
(adjective and old participle); ****
M15. The dative flags
There is a good deal of evidence for the former existence of two suffixes, of the forms -ki
and -ts-, occurring in both finite and non-finite forms of verbs. The function of each
suffix was to increase the valency of a verb by adding a dative object to its diathesis.
When -ki is added, the participial suffix -i is suppressed; when -ts- is added, this is
followed by the usual -i in the participle. There is a modest amount of evidence from old
B that -ki was once added to intransitive verbs and -ts- to transitive verbs, but this